A frequent task Bachelor’s degree-seeking students can expect to giving during their four-year college tenure are oral presentations. Much effort is typically put into how to verbally communicate the message to the audience. However, equally important is the inclusion of nonverbal communication to the audience. Students can deliver interesting and well-rounded presentations when both verbal and nonverbal cues are added to a presentation.

When a person expresses meaning without using words, he or she is exhibiting nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication is used to convey meaning and exchange ideas. For example, if a person stands at attention when delivering a speech or is shaking his or her head, he or she is nonverbally communicating something to a person or audience. There are several elements of nonverbal communication that can be help with delivering outstanding oral presentations.

Eye contact is extremely important when delivering oral presentations. Looking audience members in the eye reflects confidence and authority. Your audience is apt to believe and take heed to what you are communicating if there is direct eye contact. Try to make eye contact throughout your presentation, and try to include all audience members or at least all sections. Try not to stay focused on one area.

Show your emotions when giving an oral presentation through facial expressions. This may sound like drama, but a little drama can be good. Facial expressions are compelling for emphasizing your message. It keeps the audience engaged and appreciative of your enthusiasm. Use expressions such as raising your eyebrow for a question, pursed lips for concentration, or lowering eyebrows to convey anger.

The use of your hands and arms, when used properly, can be very powerful gestures. Use gestures to emphasize points, details, or even an argument. The use of arms and hands should be subtle, yet meaningful. Be mindful not to overuse gestures, as that can be distracting and take away from your message. Meaningless gestures can leave your audience questioning what is being said.

Posture can reveal a lot about the presenter and set the tone of the presentation. The posture refers to the position of the body. You want to be relaxed yet command authority. Keep your spine straight and your head high. When standing, legs should be slightly open, and arms should be open (inviting), except when using them to express an emotion or emphasize a point as discussed in “gestures.”

Maintain the right amount of proximity from the audience. Maintaining the right distance can be tricky. You want to be close enough to the audience so that they can hear you and feel you are within reach. Yet, at the same time, you should be a comfortable distance away that you are not just talking to the front row but rather the entire audience.

Nonverbal communication is essential for the audience’s understanding of the overall oral presentation. Just like words, they can convey what you think or how you feel about what you are saying. Keep in mind that nonverbal cues may show feelings that you may not want to share, or that are not necessarily true. Therefore, be aware of the nonverbal messages that you are sending. Students enrolled in online colleges may have less oral presentations to give, but they still will learn the importance of the different kinds of communication while earning an online Bachelor’s.

Is it conclusion or conclusions?
One key thing to clear up here is the difference between a ‘conclusion’ and ‘conclusions’. Conclusions are made throughout your paper, when you are recognizing that a certain author made an advancement in rabbit fertility, or organinisational culture change management, etc. Conclusions are made by you to the reader re-enforcing what you have just been going over (i.e. what the reader was just reading) and clarifying what meaning it had and moving on. Many academics term these as ‘sign posts’, elements in your work where you close on point and head for another.
On the other hand, a conclusion appears at the end of your academic paper. It ‘wraps things up’ and concludes the arguments that you have put forward in your paper. This part is often the part that the reader remembers and so needs to be the best part of your paper. Do you go to a journal article, read the introduction and conclusion to see if it is any good, or worth reading? Well I know I definitely did in graduate school, so you need to allow your conclusion to make an impact on your reader.

Answer Questions
You want to answer a major question(s) in your conclusion – so what? (possibly the most fundamental question in academia) You need to show people that your paper was (or indeed is) meaningful when they read it, and is useful to them; whether this is due to it being a paper that they can quote from or whether it identify answers to certain questions for your academic marker.

Don’t just repeat
You don’t want to repeat and summarise your paper. You need to draw on the main points of your paper that are of interest and need to be highlighted. You will need to support your essay here by referring to examples and not leading them down the path to seem that the information contained is not just some random paper.

Direct your Readers
You will need to relate your conclusion to the reader so that they can understand your conclusion in a real world context. If you introduced the essay generally, then have gone specific during your writing, then consider writing specific and looking in general context how your conclusions can be concluded to a global stance.

Create meaning that is unique
Creating and having new meaning in academia means not that you need to have new information, or some ground breaking theory, but will entail you encapsulating your own ideas, with other author’s work and putting them into a new and understandable picture. In general, the summary of the paper and its meaning is worth more than any single part of the paper.

3 Strategies to success:

– Challenge the reader – Challenge the reader to understand what you have read and apply it to their own lives in some way

– Look to the future – By looking to the future in your conclusion you can direct your readers to look towards the future and allow them to think more globally about the impacts your conclusions could have on them

– Pose questions – Posing questions to your reader or the topic in general will allow their minds to wonder and allow your readers to gain a new perspective on the topic that your paper is about. It can also help when you are wanting to bring your main ideas about.

The key points in this article are helpful if you are just wanting a quick guide in your writing in academia, but you should remember to get your work checked by a professional proofreader.

By: Nick Sanders

Nick Sanders is the owner and founder of Supaproofread.com, an online proofreading and editing services company, specialising in editing proofreading services. You should visit them if you are looking for proofreading.